treepower

A really good day of teaching and learning at Kings – the first day of synthetic anatomy was high octane focused teaching. The team’s learning over the years has been honed and rather than every year throwing everything that has been learnt up in the air, as a team we are focused, we learn and grow, this enables us to deliver a positive experience to the students. Went to see Gecko’s the wedding at Sadlers Wells East – a stunningly tight show with some really fabulous ‘theatre moments’ highlights include – a man with ‘floating objects’ that he attempts to grasp, the men in the box, and the appearing monument as table were great stage craft moments, and the lighting as ever with Gecko was moodily appropriate. Meanwhile Fadoul was on the turntable at a friend’s house, the album Al Zman Saib is fabulous. Onto screens Empire with David Olusoga is another exercise in lifting the lid over the lies I was told as a child as to the greatness and fairness of Great Britian.

ayearofvoices

after a year of work it’s time to make the work visible to a wider audience – my first year of the residency at Sizewell C has been amazing and I can’t wait to share the work with the community…..it will be interesting, hanging the work over 4 sites today was instructive, so many voices in my head instructing and guiding my decisions. onto screens Eternity – oh dear, in another writer/director’s hands the interesting premise might be more interesting and less hetro-normative and just dull. The Rip – tight acting served by a great script. The Life of Chuck will have you confusedly torn apart in a beautiful way.

sometimetoreflect

Work on POWER the show at Snape Maltings continues, it’s an admin moment – price lists, interviews, social media activity. But I’m also making new work, which I love to do, anything to disrupt the experience and seek to be in a place of not knowing. The interviews are interesting in that they provide moments of reflection on what has been a full-on year. Some are listed here

Q: How would you describe your work?

The work is a way to mediate existence in this world, this is, I hope a two-way street. From my point of view the work is made as a way to make sense of the world. But I want the work to leave space for the viewer, to enable them to stop and reflect. To facilitate moments of contemplation. My practice often sets out to reposition and redirect. The work is a question rather than an answer, a collaboration in the mind and hand between me as maker and audience as reader/viewer.

Q: What about the residency with Sizewell Creative interested you?

The residency with First light, a great organisation whose primary visibility is the free festival on the beach in Lowestoft but their engagement with the community has extended to this project and they have been wonderfully supportive. I spend my life as an artist travelling to work in different parts of the UK and this was a chance to be involved in something local that was going to affect me personally. I have been working within Sizewell C bearing witness to the changes that are taking place, responding, artistically, to both the construction and ultimately the human side of this project. It was almost as if I’ve been waiting for an opportunity like this since I moved to Suffolk in 1990, when I would go to watch the building of Sizewell B. I remember reflecting at this huge undertaking, which at its core was about utilising something so small and yet so fundamental to our existence. Spontaneous, collaborative tattooing that I have been engaged in with @jim_skins over the past 2 years added another connection. The lines and marks on my body are similar to the lines of evidence created during a neutrino particle interaction event within atomic energy.  Finally, I live in a house that was created in opposition to Nuclear Power, designed by Clive Latimer, an anarchist, pacifist, and a vocal member of Stop Sizewell B. I have recently realised that I had been living this residency for longer than I knew.

Q: What is your medium of choice and why?

Each opportunity has a different need or outcome dependant on the circumstances of the situation. I'm generally interested in systems, the idea of control and power. This manifests itself in a range of different types of artworks. I have developed a practice where physical outcomes are dependent on the opportunities available; each individual context requires flexibility and so a huge range of outcomes can be defined as my practice from permanent sculptural installations to ephemeral giveaways and presentations.  Within this residency I have made assemblages, sculptures, 2D and 3D prints, films and gifs. I trained as a graphic designer, so the work often uses design processes within a fine art context. I think I am happiest when there are practical processes to be negotiated between the idea and the final artwork.

Q: What are your processes and where did you find inspiration for your exhibition?

Sizewell C is such a huge and complex activity that inspiration can come from anywhere and everything. Going on site one is dwarfed by the scale of the physical activity taking place, the endeavour is truly monumental. I have also been fascinated by the systems involved in preparing the site and its potential workforce, the logistics, gannt charts, the language used within the legal paperwork, which is its own mountain to climb. Talking with people who work there has been inspiring, I felt that their worlds required engagement, be it the archaeologists, the Chaplin, branding managers, data analysists or the community engagement team. Then there is the space the work will be exhibited, Snape. Although the work I’ve made is not site specific the specificity of the spaces will be considered when I am hanging the work, attempting to collaborate with the quality of the spaces to enhance the work.

Q: If you could own any piece of art what would you own and why?

This is a challenging question, my walls are quite small and would not accommodate most of the art I love and anyway the answer changes with each art experience; I have just been to MONA in Tasmania and encountered The Divine Comedy by Alfredo Jarr, a 30-minute art experience that was transformative. But within the context of this residency, I would have to pick The Ambassadors by Holbein. The work is clever, something I admire, a clever idea executed with skilled craft. The realistic portraits stare down at you, wearing fine robes and jewellery, you can feel the weight of the fur and believe if you touched it, it would be real. The work appears to be about the demonstration of power, but there is also discord and the meticulously rendered objects displayed on a shelf have knowledge embedded in them. There are so many clues and readings to be had if you take the time to look. If the code is understood there are messages that can be decoded. The tools of science are rendered with precision for all to see. Finally, there is the anamorphic scull. Who could not be impressed by the artists potential to show off. I can remember standing in just the right place in the National Gallery, I felt that I had unlocked the knowledge and had become part of a parallel, hidden world that was always there but unseen by most.

Q: Have you always wanted to be an artist?

I don't think I could have expressed it in those terms – I didn’t know what an artist was and I had never met one. As a young child I loved drawing, I was always doing it, my art teachers at school were interesting and showed interest in me. I felt that it was the only place you could express yourself and were seen as a person. The art room was a sanctuary from 70s comprehensive teaching. They played music and appeared to exist in another world. I took myself off see art in galleries, another type of sanctuary, and was drawn to arts transgressive nature, although again I would not have had the words to explain why. But I was enquiring. Going to a foundation course was an eye opener, there were people in the world like me, I had found my people. Although without the government position on tuition fees I don’t think I would have made the journey into the world of the art school in London.

Q: What advice would you give to aspiring artists?

This depends on if you want it as a ‘career’.  Making art is a glorious activity, manifesting the ideas in your head into a physical being, wow…magic. But as a job for this to happen you have to be doing it, not thinking about it, planning to do it but be doing it. Eventually those around you will have given up and you will be left doing it. This sounds brutal but having a job as an artist is challenging. It is undervalued within the society we live in, so you have to have belief that what you do is of value.

Q: Is there any piece in the exhibition that you found particularly challenging to create?

As an artist I often I find myself between positions and states of being. Artists are and have to be many things to exist and to make work. Not fitting, slipping between is often an artist’s default position. For artists, being invisible is often a mode of operation especially when bearing witness, creating testimony to what has happened. A person posited that this residency was like being a war artist, a comment I initially rejected, I felt that building a power station has little to do with the horrors of war. But I came to realise that the remark was not about the physical situation, Sizewell as a battle ground, but rather an observation on my role as a neutral observer. For this residency my intention was to make work that people could find a connection to regardless of their position on Sizewell C.  As an artist there are many challenges to making art, of choosing the right materials and processes when making an idea, often one that is beautifully formed in your mind, into a physical state. The technical aspects of 3D printing, the frustration of AI prompts and negotiating access were all challenging.  I often ask myself where the work is. I think the work is around the work. The work of making the work happen is hidden. Conversations create the work, and the conversation is embedded in the work, in the negotiation of opportunities within what is a complex, hierarchical, organisation run on strict rules and systems, with a specific outcome, the building of a nuclear power station. A process diametrically in opposition to that of an artist working randomly, and rhizomic, towards an unspecified goal. But that is the job and it has been fascinating placing myself in a position where I don’t know.

Dead and Alive - the book of essays by Zadie Smith – is insightful and instructive – it’s like having a really knowledgeable, interesting person standing next to you elevating your thoughts on stuff you thought you knew about. onto screens About Fate – a beautiful example of will-they-won’t-they. Trap House – madness about taking control and delivering justice, with weapons. Forever – interesting time-travel premise twist. His and Hers – talk about a twist – twister madness, will you see any of it coming -fabulous?

its4inthemorning

Still recovering from jet lag, 4 in the morning seems to be my new wake up call. Reflecting on the amazing experience that is flying to Australia. Ordering vegetarian food means that you eat types of noodles, tofu and mushrooms never tasted before. Stopping off in China at Guangzhou, a mega city of 18-19 million people I have never heard of and maybe most people in the UK, (do we really know anything about China)? is mindblowing. Flying in you could see identical tower blocks stretching into the horizon, it felt similar to the experience of cut and paste when creating a landscape in a video game. The airport is huge and amazingly functional and the Southern China Lounge is a must – a shower and food and a massage chair – not to mention the toilets is essential after an 8-hour flight with another 10 hours to go! The cameras on the outside of the plan provide extraordinary views, it would be great if all planes had this. to screens - Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere – a moving portrayal of creative confusion. Nitram – a devastatingly unsettling portrayal. Train Dreams – a mournful moment in American history. Inside Out – an insightful and beautiful insight.

longwalksdownunder

A short trip over Christmas to Australia and Tasmania. How to even start to talk about what I encountered - from MONA a 'gallery' tunnelled out of rock to house a collection of extravagant installations to watching an echidna feasting on a nest of bullet ants. Completely taken by the natural environment - the trees, birds and animals are other. You find yourself constantly stumbling upon creatures only previously seen on nature programmes. The first kangaroo is amazing, but I loved the mind-blowing birds. Their feathers and calls. Melbourne is a thoroughly modern city and so lush, every space between the built landscape seemed filled with excessive amounts of growth. There were great galleries, parks, food markets and stunning architecture. Tasmania was stunningly beautiful, miles of 'empty' space filled with light. A boat trip to an uninhabited island off an island off an island offered real tranquillity and calm only broken with a host of extraordinary bird noises including the amazing Kookaburra ……Then there is the glorious food including chicken parva, giant prawns, 'bugs', champion pies, curried oyster pies, and the endless snacks, sweets, biscuits and cakes I've never seen before, to many to mention.